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Human Kinds and Biological Kinds: Some Similarities and Differences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

John Dupré
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Abstract

This paper compares human diversity with biological diversity generally. Drawing on the pluralistic perspective on biological species defended in earlier work (2002, chs. 3 and 4), I argue that there are useful parallels to be drawn between human and animal kinds, as there are between their respective sources in cultural evolution and evolution generally. This view is developed in opposition to the insistence by sociobiologists and their successors on minimizing the significance of culture. The paper concludes with a discussion of the relation between cultural difference and individual difference, and the relation of the latter to conceptions of human freedom.

Type
Biological Kinds and Human Kinds
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 71 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2002 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers , December 2004 , pp. 892 - 900
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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References

Brown, Donald E. (1991), Human Universals. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Dupré, John (2001), Human Nature and the Limits of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupré, John (2002), Humans and Other Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pinker, Stephen (2002), The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking.Google Scholar